Making Suggestions: What Leaders Need to Succeed in Business
Written by Phil Geldart, Eagle’s Flight CEO
The next principle of leadership we’ll be discussing in this series is making suggestions. Providing clear, concise, and practical suggestions to your employees and peers will contribute to you being a better leader. Here are some key things to keep in mind when making suggestions:
1. Clearly Presented
When we’re very enthusiastic and excited to contribute, there are times when we don’t seem to make much sense to anyone but ourselves! We need to remember that the people we’re talking to haven’t yet had a chance to follow the thought process we took to arrive at our ideas, so if we don’t present them clearly, they will be lost. If we remember this, we’ll take a few extra minutes to make sure we present things in a way that makes sense to them.
An organization places great value on the suggestions that individuals bring. You have the responsibility to ensure your suggestions are clearly presented in order to maximize the time of those reviewing the suggestion, as well as to ensure that good ideas are not lost because they were poorly presented.
2. Adapt to the Listener
How well you understand your audience, and reflect that understanding in your suggestion, often determines how well your suggestion is received. If you suggest to your 10-year-old daughter that she “redecorate her room,” the response you get could likely be very different from the response you would get from your spouse.
In order to avoid the trauma and frustration of having to move from “No!” to “Great!” you need to be sure that your suggestion is adapted to your audience’s perspective. In this case, you might say something like, “Let’s take a look at how we can change your room so that you like it even more.” In this way, you’ve made a similar suggestion, but dramatically changed the way you presented it to adapt it to the listener. This does not change the intent, but it certainly does change the way in which your suggestion is received. We need to make the effort to craft our suggestion in terms which others will understand.
3. Thought-Out
We show respect for others when the ideas we present have been thought through. By presenting the first thing that comes into our mind, we are requiring our listeners both to figure out the implications of the suggestion and to assess it.
When you’ve first taken a few moments to think through the consequences, then you may be able to edit out some of the less practical pieces, so that when you present the suggestion it has more value, and as such the listeners can take it and begin working with it right away. This requires that you think through what your idea is before you present it, and mentally do a quick check to determine how feasible it is, as well as what some of the consequences would be if it were to be implemented as you originally intended.
Within a corporation, when ideas are put forward or requested, there’s an expectation that they’ll be well thought through; the consequences of the idea, if implemented, will have been considered; and the implications will also have been considered. Bear this in mind when you present your ideas so they can have maximum impact and can be moved to implementation as quickly as possible.
4. Open-Minded
When discussing ideas with others, it’s often easy to have a particular favorite—your own! Very often the things we think of seem to us to be the best ideas. Partly this is because we thought them up ourselves, but more often it is because we understand our idea and the implications of it better than we understand others’ ideas and their implications. Even though we initially tend to favor our own ideas, it’s important that we develop the ability to concentrate on what would be best overall—not only for ourselves but for everyone—and to recognize how our suggestions can be modified or shaped to create an even better idea.
When working within a group and trying to come up with the best possible approach based on the input and suggestions of others, you need to think of this process a bit like trying to create a beautiful piece of pottery. The potter puts the clay on the wheel and begins spinning it, and under his hands a beautiful pot slowly emerges. Similarly, ideas initially presented are like the clay that everyone in the group can begin to work on.
As each person works with the concept by giving more ideas, suggestions, modifications, or input, then slowly under the collective hands of all concerned, those early ideas are shaped into something that ultimately becomes a really top-notch suggestion. The shaping process and the final solution belong to no one individual, but rather are the collective result of everyone working on it together.
5. Improve on It
Sometimes an idea is so good that, almost on first hearing, everybody immediately recognizes that it is a great thing to do and everyone wants to get started with it. At other times, ideas get worked on for a period of time until the group finally settles on something that everyone feels is the right approach.
In both these cases, you need to pause, let a couple of days pass, then revisit the ideas and see if you can improve on them. During that intervening time, the ideas tend to percolate and get thought through. When you come back and revisit them a day or two later, a new approach, or something else that maybe wasn’t thought of at the time, comes to mind and can be included.
The process of improvement is one of the more interesting and exciting aspects of organizational life. Improving ideas and suggestions is fun, is exciting, and allows great room for creativity, brainstorming, and “blue sky” thinking. Initial ideas, no matter how great, can usually be improved upon with additional thought and brainstorming. Make it a priority to attempt to improve on great suggestions before their implementation. In this way, the greatest possible benefit that can accrue to the organization will do so.
6. Practical
A great suggestion really only has value once it has been brought to life and put into practice. Sometimes the person making the suggestion is the only one who really understands the full detail of how it can be done. The idea may be discussed, improved upon, and reworked by others, but when it comes to actually implementing it, the originator may be the only one who really knows what steps to take, and so is crucial to seeing it fully realized. Everyone may enthusiastically adopt the idea. However, you need to also be part of the implementation, and not say, “Well, I came up with the idea, so now someone else can implement it.”
If everyone participates in the implementation, the idea has a much greater chance of coming to life. There will also be times when implementing a suggestion you’ve made does not require your personal involvement, and you’ll need to let it go.
Suggestions need to be practical, and they need people to help with their implementation. Once your suggestion has come forward, the organization will expect that everyone be quick to assist with implementation. This is typically easy when the suggestion is yours, but it can be somewhat more difficult when the suggestion is someone else’s, or when yours has undergone significant transformation.
Following these six steps will help executives make suggestions within their organization. In next week’s segment on the principles of leadership, we will discuss collaboration.
